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The Big City; Civil Obedience

When mayor giuliani announced his campaign to introduce civility into New York, he was promptly greeted with Bronx cheers. New Yorkers proclaimed their historic right to be rude and insisted that this is too tough a town for anyone to tame. But there is now startling evidence that New Yorkers can be polite, thanks to some fieldwork I conducted under the guidance of Antanas Mockus, a pioneer of urban civility.

Mockus might be described as the Rudy Giuliani of Bogota, Colombia, although he is far more radical and Bogota is a far more raucous town than New York. It is a place where mooning can be a brilliant political move, as Mockus demonstrated four years ago when he was the rector of the National University. Confronted with a group of obstreperous students during a lecture, he responded by dropping his pants. The moment was captured on video and made him famous. Forced to resign from the university, he was promptly elected Mayor of Bogota by a landslide.

An academic trained in philosophy and mathematics took over a city with one of the highest murder rates in the world, more than seven times as high as New York's. The hospitals and morgues were overwhelmed during the Christmas season, which was celebrated with fireworks, drinking binges and fights. The city's notoriously bad drivers considered traffic lights optional and resolved disputes with machetes, guns and grenades.

Mockus was determined to teach those people manners. ''The crucial part of a citizens' culture,'' he explained, ''is learning to correct others without mistreating them or generating aggression. We need to create a society in which civility rules over cynicism and apathy.''

Mockus went around town dressed in a Superman costume urging Bogotanos to become ''super citizens.'' To shame jaywalkers and discourage pickpockets, he sent mimes into the streets to walk behind them and mimic their actions. He gave motorists a new weapon for venting aggression: cards with a thumbs-down sign that they could hold up, like soccer referees, to signal that another driver had committed a foul. There were also cards with a thumbs-up sign to flash at particularly civil motorists.

The Mayor calmed the Christmas season by getting people to turn in their weapons voluntarily. Besides paying them a cash bounty, he added a symbolic flourish by melting down the weapons and turning them into silverware so that the metal would be used for sustaining life instead of ending it.

Mockus became so popular that he is now running for President of Colombia. Bogota's murder rate has declined, and the streets feel less mean. ''In a short time, people learned to change their behavior,'' said Dejanira Tibana, the Bogata editor of El Tiempo, Colombia's leading daily. ''Drivers learned to give each other the thumbs-up and thumbs-down signs with a grin. Bogota is still Bogota, but there is more respect and tolerance in the air.''

Obviously, not all of Mockus's tactics are right for New York. The prospect of Giuliani in a Superman suit is not pretty. Mimes could probably enforce Giuliani's anti-jaywalking campaign better than the police, but an army of mimes is an even more horrifying image than Super Rudy. Besides, jaywalking isn't worth worrying about. This is a city of pedestrians in which motorists already have too many privileges, like the right to awaken their neighbors with useless alarms. When I told Mockus about our plague of car alarms, he suggested that New York borrow his technique.

''How about encouraging people to hand in their car alarms,'' he said, ''in return for which the city will recompense them or make a donation to a community group?'' In keeping with the spirit of his guns-to-spoons program, we could melt down the alarms and turn them into soundproofing insulation, or perhaps stereo headphones to be given to bearers of boom boxes.

Mockus said that his soccer-style warning cards could also work in New York. So I decided to test a modified version of his system. Wearing a black-and-white-striped referee's shirt and a badge identifying me as a Civil Referee, I took to the streets looking for incivility and hoping not to be killed.

My first victim was a vendor whose display rack of sunglasses was blocking the entrance to the subway station at 40th Street and Seventh Avenue. I explained to him that I was with a citizens group called Big City Civility and handed him a yellow card labeled ''Warning'' on which I had written his infraction: ''Blocking public steps.'' The card had our group's logo and a message: ''Please pardon the interruption. The Civil Referee handing you this yellow card doesn't mean to be impolite. The card is a formal warning that you have been observed committing a less-than-civil act.''

The vendor immediately apologized and promised to move the rack, but when I returned a few minutes later it was still blocking the steps. I pulled out a red card labeled ''Expulsion!''

''I'm afraid I'll have to give you this,'' I said, and showed him the text on the card: ''Having ignored a previous warning, you are hereby expelled from the Civil Society of New York City.''

''No, no, please don't give me that,'' he said, and this time he moved the rack. ''Is that O.K.?'' We shook hands amiably, and the rack stayed there the rest of the day.

To my amazement, that was the typical response I got all day long during my patrol of midtown. Cabdrivers looked sheepish when I cited them for honking. The people who got white cards thanking them for performing a civil act (like picking up litter and throwing it in a trash can) beamed with delight. A few miscreants didn't quite grasp what was going on -- I couldn't get the immigrant vendor grilling meat outside the Port Authority to understand the warning for smoke pollution. But most people understood and were even apologetic, like the young man I cited for obstructing the door of a subway car when he got on, and another young guy caught spitting.

''You're right, spitting shouldn't be allowed,'' he told me. ''Giuliani's thing about jaywalking is stupid, but people shouldn't spit.''

''I'll just give you a warning this time,'' I said.

''I appreciate that,'' he said.

There were a few unrepentant New Yorkers, like the man who turned up his boom box after I gave him the warning. A drunk panhandler blocking the steps at a subway station screamed at me and tore up the card. The most vehement response came from a beggar dressed as a jester who was standing on a box in the middle of a crowded Times Square sidewalk. When I dropped a yellow warning card (for pedestrian obstruction) into his beggar's cup, he became furious.

''What's uncivil is you coming around here and bothering me,'' he said. ''You be best advised to stay out of my face in the future.'' To further clarify his feelings, he promised to insert my pen into my body.

A few hours later I found him blocking the sidewalk on the other side of Broadway. This time he was up on his box twisting balloons into animal shapes and selling them to a crowd of children. I put a red expulsion card into his cup. He crumpled it and hurled it at me, screaming more obscene threats. As the parents began dragging their children away from the unjolly jester, I took some consolation in seeing that the sidewalk was less congested.

Because of that experience, I was more cautious when I saw a large young man drop a candy wrapper farther up Broadway. He and his two equally large companions had the sort of physiques associated with middle linebackers and veterans of prison weight rooms. I decided to concentrate on a smaller man nearby who was beating a drum. He refused to accept the yellow card, even after I explained the concept of a Civil Referee.

''Don't come around joking with me,'' he said. ''If you're the police, be the police. If not, go away. Nobody's complaining about my drumming.''

''Hold on!'' he shouted and held up his hands in a timeout signal. ''I call foul! You can't complain. You're the referee!''

It seemed futile to argue with that logic. I was starting to walk away when the three large young men accosted me. ''Man, you took a real chance there,'' the largest one said. ''That guy could have jumped you. What's this group you're with?''

I explained the principles of Big City Civility, and they listened so sympathetically that I was emboldened. ''You know,'' I said to the one in the middle, ''a couple of minutes ago I spotted you littering.''

''Give him a ticket!'' one of his friends said.

''I deserve it,'' he said, and I handed him a yellow card. As he and his friends headed up Broadway, he turned around and shouted back, ''Hey, keep up the good work.'' I could barely hear him over the din of the drummer, but at that moment the city somehow felt a little more civil.